The Kindly Ones

Unter den Linden was still empty; here and there, a shell struck a façade or a pile of rubble. My ears were still ringing from the Frenchman’s machine-gun volley. I began running toward the Brandenburg Gate. I had to get out of the city at all costs, it had become a monstrous trap. My information was already a day old, but I knew that the only way out was to go through the Tiergarten and then by the Ost-West-Achse down to the Adolf-Hitler-Platz; then I’d see. The day before, that side of the city still wasn’t sealed off, some Hitlerjugend still held the bridge over the Havel, Wannsee was in our hands. If I can reach Thomas’s place, I said to myself, I’m saved. The Pariser Platz, in front of the still relatively intact Gate, was strewn with overturned, wrecked, burned-out vehicles; in the ambulances, charred corpses still wore on their extremities white casts made of plaster of Paris, which doesn’t burn. I heard a powerful rumbling noise: a Russian tank passed behind me, sweeping wrecked cars in front of it; several Waffen-SS were perched on top, they must have captured it. It stopped right next to me, fired, then started off in a clatter of treads; one of the Waffen-SS observed me indifferently. The tank turned right into the Wilhelmstrasse and disappeared. A little farther on, down Unter den Linden, between the lampposts and the rows of shredded trees, I glimpsed a human shape through the smoke, a man in civilian clothes with a hat. I began running again and, threading between the obstacles, went through the Gate, black with smoke, riddled with bullets and shrapnel.

Beyond lay the Tiergarten. I left the road and dove into the trees. Aside from the whirring of flying mortar shells and distant explosions, the park was strangely silent. The Nebelkrähe, those hooded crows whose hoarse cries always resound through the Tiergarten, had all left, fleeing the constant shelling for a safer place: no Sperrkommando in the sky, no flying court-martial for birds. How lucky they are, and they don’t even know it. Corpses sprawled among the trees; and all along the pathways, sinister, swayed the hanged. It began to rain again, a light rain through which the sun still shone. The bushes in the flowerbeds had blossomed, the smell of rose bushes mingled with that of corpses. From time to time I turned around: between the trees, I seemed to glimpse the silhouette following me. A dead soldier was still holding his Schmeisser; I grabbed it, aimed it at the silhouette, pulled the trigger; but the weapon was jammed and I threw it furiously into a bush. I had hoped not to stray too far from the main road, but on that side I saw movement, vehicles, and I moved deeper into the park. To my right, the Victory Column rose above the trees, hidden by its protective coverings and still obstinately standing. In front of me several pools of water blocked the path: instead of heading back toward the road, I decided to skirt round them toward the canal, where I used to go, a very long time ago, prowling the night in search of pleasure. From there, I said to myself, I’ll cut through the zoo and go lose myself in Charlottenburg. I crossed the canal over the bridge where I had had that curious altercation with Hans P., one night. Beyond, the wall of the zoo had collapsed in several places, and I climbed up over the rubble. Sustained fire came from the large bunker, light cannon shots and machine-gun volleys.